Any remotely competent lawyer would get that kind of identification thrown out of court. Any lineup, even a photo lineup, without multiple options is inadmissible in court.

Sounds to me like this was used as an investigative lead that helped them find other evidence, rather than as the principal evidence presented in court. This really isn't different than a police officer viewing the recording to see the offender's face, then going through books of mugshots to find the face, then investigating those people that the officer thinks might be the offender. This is simply the computer taking the image that the police officer identified and searching those "books" for close matches, then the police looking at the MO of the crime as compared to the MO of the person previously arrested, and investigating ones that have the most commonality first.

In this case they identified a suspect, the suspect apparently had offended in this same way before, and the suspect was tried and convicted. This doesn't seem to violate any new privacy considerations- the recordings being collected themselves are nothing new, and the mugshot database isn't either. Simply making the comparison itself doesn't add any new fuel to the fire of personal liberty complaints or of violation of privacy.

I very much doubt that the victim was even told that computer-driven facial recognition software played a role, and if the victim was told that, then I doubt that an individual suspect was identified by police without being part of a greater lineup.

Besides, based on the TV "police procedurals" that have been on for the last fifteen years, I expect that a statistically significant portion of the population already believe that this sort of facial recognition was already going on. Given that I remember ac

Did it occur to you that it's possible to forgive but to not forget? Recidivisim is a real problem, and one of the biggest indicators that one is going to break the law is that they already have a history of breaking the law. It would be stupid to not keep a functional, searchable list of those that have been convicted of a crime to compare against when crimes by persons unknown have been committed.

I'm all in favor giving people opportunity to change their behavior for the better, but I'm not going to

This really isn't different than a police officer viewing the recording to see the offender's face, then going through books of mugshots to find the face, then investigating those people that the officer thinks might be the offender. This is simply the computer taking the image that the police officer identified and searching those "books" for close matches, then the police looking at the MO of the crime as compared to the MO of the person previously arrested, and investigating ones that have the most commonality first.

Well, since a lot of manual bars were and are lowered when we go from manual matching to computerized search you have to be a bit more careful with that argument. (It's close to being an antique if nothing else).

It's akin to the difference between going out fishing with a pole or two, to scouring the ocean with a fleet of trawlers. In essence it's the same activity, but the effects can be vastly different.

It's for example not at all improbable that the quality of match will decrease significantly when compu

They don't do that way, that is leading the witness. They include the person they've identified along with other people in a mug shot lineup and ask the witness to pick the person they saw. If the witness picks the same person that the police have already identified, then that is 2 pieces of evidence that they know who did it.

This is nothing more than the type of fingerprint matching that's been going on for many decades. It just puts a name to a person after the fact. Now on the other hand, if he was actively recognized via facial recognition as he was out and about in public and then apprehended, well that would be a different story.

The expression used was "who's to say" that they didn't. It seems pretty unlikely now, but the people who said that the three letter agencies were doing some of the things that we now know for a fact that they have actually been doing were called crazy and paranoid before. After a certain level of complete betrayal, there isn't much reason to give the benefit of the doubt. As for the effort required, who would have thought (except for sane, logical people, who can reasonably extrapolate future trends) that

Whoops, submitted too soon. I was just going to add about your secret evidence scenario (yes, yes, it's only the provenance of the evidence that's secret, not the evidence itself) that Franz Kafka wrote a lovely little story about just such a court system.

Who's to say this didn't happen? They match him up with CCTV images from elsewhere. Then, they pretend to recognise him from the train video.

The OP's concern was that they would be matching the face of the criminal from the train footage against faces of innocent people out in public, rather than against mug shots from when criminals were booked. I.e. They'd be doing a dragnet over every face in public, rather than against a collection of faces of known criminals. How does what you're talking about relate to that in any way? I can't imagine a scenario where they'd get any sort of benefit out of doing what you're talking about.

Near as I can tell, they need to be able to demonstrate in court that they have a way of linking the guy in the train footage to the person they've apprehended. There may be a few links in the chain tying the person to the crime. If the police claim it's via facial recognition from the train footage, they'll need to be able to demonstrate that they can make that identification from the train footage. If CCTV footage gets involved, we've added an extra link to the chain, so they'll need to demonstrate that they can tie the person from the train footage to the CCTV footage (e.g. the person is seen heading in the same direction wearing the same clothes at the same time and location) and then can tie the CCTV footage to the mugshot, otherwise it'll do them no good. And if they're doing that, I don't see why anyone should have any issues with it, since it's no different than going to neighboring stores after a robbery to see if any of them have cameras that got a better view of the suspect's face. That's old-fashioned detective work, not something to fear.

On the other hand, if all they're doing is matching CCTV footage against mugshots, without linking it back to the train footage, then they've failed to tie anyone to anything at all. All they can get from that is "previously arrested person X is currently at location Y", which wouldn't do them much good in court, and it wouldn't be useful to them in the least in getting a conviction since they wouldn't be able to demonstrate the link back to the suspect from the train footage.

And that's before we even begin to address your claims about the NSA stuff, which I find highly unlikely, even with the revelations we've had (everyone knows it's the FBI that keeps the database on US citizens, not the NSA:P).

If they're willing to commit those very serious felonies, then the addition of facial recognition software makes no difference whatsoever. Without it (or, rather, before it), they'd just falsify other evidence instead.

If you believe that all cops are like the ones you see on TV, you should - seriously - move to some place where the nearest other human being is at least 500 miles away. This would be to your benefit, and to everyone else's, as well.

Processing power would be the main restriction. Running facial recognition on CCTV over a large number of cameras in real time is impractical. Now if you know where he's likely to be or are running it after the fact it's a different story.

An hour to go through effectively still images looking for numbers using the computing power of Google compared to real time analysis of video for faces using the computing power of a city police department...

I agree, but I think there's another concern here as well: false positives are significantly more dangerous than with other fingerprinting techniques. If DNA samples or fingerprints provide false positives, we have (admittedly error-prone) eyewitnesses as a final layer of defense, and since people who look entirely different can have similar fingerprints or DNA signatures, it's likely that the people look nothing alike. Not so with facial recognition, since a false positive is likely to be close enough to a true positive that it will be incorrectly affirmed by eyewitnesses, even if the authorities don't bias them by telling them that the guy was a match.

None of which is to say that I think we should stop using it, since it is a valuable tool. I merely think that it needs to be used with an understanding of its faults and taken with the grain of salt it deserves.

since a false positive is likely to be close enough to a true positive that it will be incorrectly affirmed by eyewitnesses, even if the authorities don't bias them by telling them that the guy was a match.

That's exactly what I thought when I read in TFA that "he ranked No. 1 among possible matches."

It's a matter of when, not if, the #1 match is innocent, but was in the same place at the same time as the actual perpetrator.

It's a matter of when, not if, the #1 match is innocent, but was in the same place at the same time as the actual perpetrator.

So take away facial recognition and what changes?

Basic old-school law enforcement:step 1: get a description of the perp from witnessesstep 2: get a list of suspects -- find out who was therestep 3: show the witnesses the suspects and see if they recognize the guy

If you were at the scene of the crime, and looked like the perp, odds are decent you are going to get busted. After all, th

Generally speaking, there is an attempt made (as there should be) for all the guys in a lineup to look similar, which means your argument is again all lineups, despite that being proven the best way to do such things.

Do lineups test eyewitnesses with a lineup of no suspects, but all people that look like the suspect? What if none in the lineup are the actual perpetrator (i.e. the police suspect a guy that looked like the perp, but is truly innocent)?

Hopefully there's other evidence, and video surveillance might show clothing the person was wearing which he or she might still own. Worrying about edge cases isn't necessarily arguing against lineups. Just making sure they're as foolproof as possible.

In a traditional lineup, the police will have identified the suspect using an independent factor (e.g. seen at the time and place, crime fits their M.O., DNA evidence, they were later heard bragging about the crime, etc.), and the eyewitness is demonstrating their reliability by picking out the suspect from among people that look roughly similar. When the eyewitness identifies the suspect in the lineup, the police have now identified the suspect based on two (or more), independent factors that re

Why do you think DNA samples or fingerprints are more likely to have false positives than (you admitted) very poor human memory?

I'm not claiming the tech is always better, but at least with DNA samples, and I am under the impression with fingerprints (please disprove my belief), they at least have reasonable stats at how likely it is to have false positives... as opposed to "a 6 foot tall guy with blond hair".

I think his point is that fingerprint and DNA false positives dont lead to a suspect that looks like what a witness saw. Whereas facial regonition false positives almost guarantee that the person will at least look similar to what the witness saw. Thus for facial recognition, the witness-as-a-confirmation is not as compelling. It's almost the same piece of evidence, rather than two corroborating pieces.

I think his point is that fingerprint and DNA false positives dont lead to a suspect that looks like what a witness saw. Whereas facial regonition false positives almost guarantee that the person will at least look similar to what the witness saw. Thus for facial recognition, the witness-as-a-confirmation is not as compelling. It's almost the same piece of evidence, rather than two corroborating pieces.

That's a very good point, and well worth considering, especially given the now known fallibility of eyewitness accounts. (Not that courts want to really consider that, since that would make convicting someone much, much harder.

On the flip side. This match is one which humans are well equipped to reason about. We know instinctively what "likeness" means and it's easy for (almost) everybody involved to judge the similarity between i.e. a mugshot and a grainy surveillance video. In fact the quality of the evid

This post [slashdot.org] by alostpacket accurately sums up what I was getting at. I never claimed that fingerprinting techniques produce more false positives than eyewitness identification (in fact, I believe the opposite to be true). Rather, I was pointing out that DNA/fingerprints are independent of how an eyewitness identifies someone, so we can rely on eyewitness identification as an independent factor by which we can verify those earlier tests and hopefully root out any false positives. Not so with facial recognition

Caught would imply that he was walking down the street and facial recognition directed authorities to him. That did not happen.

Police state would imply they're always watching you, whether they arrest you on the spot or come by later. There's also no real line for the police to cross except better technology and that will come.

I am not concerned about this crime but rather how this technology can and will be used. I suppose one could argue this is no different than using fingerprints to catch a crook, except it is vastly more than that. AFIS only contains a small portion of the U.S. population’s fingerprints, mostly those who have already committed a crime. I doubt who decides everyone should be forced to give up their fingerprints and DNA while they’re at it to complete the database would have his job very long to

If we could limit photo matches to just arrest records, that would be one thing but although I don't have time to look up a citation, it's also being done against drivers license photos and it's not hard to see it extending out from there. Also, I never said the technology to do real time scans was available today, only that it will be in the near future. We also don't have anywhere near complete camera coverage but you don't even need anywhere near 100% to make life oppressive. And yes, there are evidenti

Wearing a mask is illegal in many states unless for medical reasons or weather.

Your own source seems to disagree with you. According to it, about half of the states blacklist specific, prohibited activities, but otherwise allow masks for anything else, while the other half whitelist a broad set of permitted activities that hit most of the common cases, but otherwise disallow masks.

Among those that blacklist activities, the lists are pretty much all the same: no wearing masks to conceal your identity while engaging in crime (i.e. it's one more charge they can add on top), no wearing ma

The only difference between the two is the rich guy is more likely to beat the rap, because he can afford better lawyers. That's an indictment of the criminal justice system, not an excuse for the poor choices of either the rich or the poor guy.

As a criminal defense attorney who has represented many hundreds of defendants (including a large number of indigents), I regret to inform you that this is not actually true.

The average criminal case usually involves a mountain of evidence left behind a poorly planned and executed crime. The defendant's guilt is painfully obvious in 90 percent of cases and as a defense attorney, all you can do is try to maneuver your client into a less crappy bargaining position so he gets a palatable plea offer.

The top 1% is defined by annual income tax filings. This is the common usage. It's what is being referred to when they say the top 1% has turnover and changes.

An alternative top 1% is to break it out by holdings. That's not commonly used. I suspect it's a more stable indicator than income but I bet it's damn hard to actually calculate since many of the assets value aren't set until they are sold.

Sometimes TSA catches people that forget to leave their guns at home but never have they caught terrorists.

Who forgets where their firearm is? I have a concealed carry license. Multiple ones in fact, the combination is good in 30-35 States. I can tell you at any moment exactly where all of my firearms are and what condition (loaded, unloaded, last time they were oiled, etc.) they're in. I have precious little sympathy for someone that "forgets" where their firearm is. The very least that should happen to them is they lose their concealed carry licenses, because they're clearly too fucking stupid to carry a d

So why the heck can't they show his face in a story about facial recognition? Why the picture of a train? That has nothing to do with facial recognition! For all we know he has some incredibly unique face or maybe a tattoo across his forehead.

So why the heck can't they show his face in a story about facial recognition? Why the picture of a train? That has nothing to do with facial recognition! For all we know he has some incredibly unique face or maybe a tattoo across his forehead.

There's 2 links in the summary - not to mention plenty of other articles about this exact story - the second one [suntimes.com] includes a photo.

Why a train? Probably because it was about a robbery that occurred on a train, but why are you asking that here when you could ask the author [arstechnica.com]?

Blanket statement that just isn't true.. nice try tho. With a high quality gallery (which the mugshot gallery is) you can obtain failure rates significantly less than 1%. The big question here is the quality of the sample taken from the CTA's cameras. Angle and Resolution are the biggest issues with CCTV footage but quantity of cameras and availability of low cost/high-rez equipment are rapidly eliminating both.

Having spent years deploying these systems I'm sorry but your claim is just plain false. The

But it doesn't justify the mass surveillance being put in all over our public spaces. It can't even be justified on the cost, but far worse is the erosion of your freedom to go about your business without being tracked and monitored permanently. It might catch the odd transgressor, but that is not an acceptable enough reason to piss away all our privacy.

Oh but you have nothing to hide, so what? Well, it was Joseph Goebbels who first made that pithy remark about having nothing to fear, and look where that ended up - many perfectly innocent people had everything to fear.

The only reasonable response to mass CCTV is for everyone to wear a balaclava. Once the system is rendered useless, they might reconsider spending taxpayer's money on it. And it sends a strong message that we simply don't want to be tracked, even if we are not criminals.

The only reasonable response to mass CCTV is for everyone to wear a balaclava.

That's silly.

People willing to wear balaclavas to avoid being tracked are clearly willing to take the much less radical step of voting for and donating to the campaigns of politicians who oppose mass CCTV coverage. If you get a sufficiently large segment of the population willing to wear balaclavas that the CCTV system is useless, then you also have enough public opposition to CCTV cameras to remove them via the political process.

The truth of the matter is that most of the population doesn't care, and a

What's the procedure about booking photos (and fingerprints taken at booking) in the US? Is it possible that your image could be on that database even if you were not convicted of a crime but just processed by the police even for something like being drunk one night and they brought you in to sober up?

What's the procedure about booking photos (and fingerprints taken at booking) in the US? Is it possible that your image could be on that database even if you were not convicted of a crime...

You're booked when you're arrested, which is long before your trial. So lots of people have had mugshots taken who later were exonerated.I doubt they are going to thrown out perfectly good records once they have them.

Is it just me or does the sentence sound unusually extreme, I mean using a firearm in the robbery should probably add to the sentence in most countries, but 22 years for stealing a phone and perhaps something similar one other time seems disproportionate.

I finally got screwed by ebay/paypal this year. Bought some cables to connect up some solar panels and the seller gave a tracking number that said delivered, even though I was home all that day, have video of the package not being delivered, but too bad so sad you are SOL.

So I lost $130, but just imagine what happens when the software says you did it when you didn't.

My problem with this would be if there were a blurry picture which then matched a few dozen people in the area. Then when the mugshots that all somewhat look like the guy are shown to the witnesses of course they are going to say, "Yup that looks like him."

Basically this system is going to be excellent at finding both the correct people and their doppelgängers. I certainly hope that in this case they were able to find some solid evidence.

Facial recognition is known to produce false positives. Identification of suspects by witnesses is well known to be notoriously unreliable and easily influenced by the interrogator. All I can hope is that this method will not be used to convict without corroborating evidence.

Everything in the world is a double-edged sword. Another example is DNA evidence.

For over a century, fingerprints have been the gold standard by which suspects were positively identified. Today, the reliability and uniqueness of an

I find it a bit appalling that this guy got 22 years for robbery. Had he killed the guy, he would have got only a little bit more time. This sentence is disproportionate and does not serve the public at all. Now the tax payers are forced to support this guy for the next 22 years at a ridiculous cost. When he gets out, they will likely have to support him some more given the lack of training in prison, and opportunities afterward. If this guy had kids, this sentence could potentially alter the children'

Obviously this criminal's previous arrests didn't serve as a wake up call. This sentence quite appropriately protects the public -- specifically the next group of innocents that this guy decides to rob at gunpoint. It also teaches the guy's children that crimes have consequences.

If stiff sentences were an effective deterrent then the US would be the safest country in the world. This is what I call governing by one's gut. It seems like it should make sense it would work that way, but the science doesn't support it. It is just a big cost to everyone. 22 years is likely 1/3 of his life.